China has 3 or 4 times the population, so to say they pass us in the “number of broadband lines” is again a new media misconception. Additionally China now owns Hong Kong which initially had almost no infrastructure for broadband, and was built from the ground up with fiber to the premise. Just looking at three or four major China population centers it is easy to see how they could have more broadband lines.
The real issue here is enabling BUSINESS to do business faster and better with high speed connectivity. International business operations should not be built in podunk. Not only does one lack high speed connectivity, but other infrastructure as well - highway access could be restricted, distance from suppliers and raw materials - all those things play into this discussion. High speed Internet access alone does not make or break a business nor does it affect the success of that business.
I own three business’s. One is an Internet Service Provider. Two of the businesses make money the old fashioned way - selling stuff to people. They don’t need any high speed anything! To imply the the US is falling behind because we don’t have 10 megs to each home, or our kids are less educated than those who have fiber to the home is generally stated by those who chose to live in the sticks but expect to have all the same services as those who live in the big city (or any city for that matter).
I believe that if you survey every city with at least 15K population you will find broadband there. Additionally when DOCSIS 3.0 is finalized we will be providing 15 megs to each home on our cable system along with voice services. Very few computers can handle a download at 15 megs today, and probably well into the future.
So the issue really requires an examination of population density, cost vs benefit, plus you have to find out what percentage of the rural population really wants broadband.
I disagree. Electronic commerce is becoming more important every day. A company or a nation with good communications capabilities has a distinct competitive advantage over one without.
A lot of U.S. companies are outsourcing their work to offshore companies, and the thing that makes it possible is high-speed connectivity. Those jobs could be done as well or better in rural America. If we can get telcos can provide telephone service to rural areas, they ought to be able to deploy broadband to those areas too.
Some people have adopted a "can't do" attitude about broadband, but I'm not one of them.
Agreed.
International business operations should not be built in podunk.
Here we differ.
70 years ago there were undoubtedly people who said rural areas didn't need electricity because, by golly, the farms had never had electricity, that was just the way it was, and if you wanted modern conveniences you should move to the city.
We decided, correctly IMHO, that electricity is so fundamental to modernity that affordable access should be provided more-or-less universally. One can debate whether the rural electric cooperatives were the way to do it -- most of the world simply turned the job over to a state-run utility system -- but we retained an essentially privatized system through the REC's. One way or another, however, we got it done.
Today broadband has become essential for business development in many sectors. Areas without it will be redlined. Many rural areas have significant competitive advantages -- lower land costs, lower taxes, low-to-non-existent crime, no congestion, short commutes, a high quality workforce, etc. This isn't a new story; a fair share of branch plants, service centers, distribution hubs, etc. have been moving to rural areas for years. But today, they need broadband. Many rural areas will also attract folks who can and would prefer to work from home, provided they can get linked.
Do we really want to walk away from all that potential simply because Verizon, Comcast, or AT&T -- whoever owns the local metro hub (very often the county seat town) -- doesn't want to bother with providing service out to the county?
I can tell you what the political answer will be. Rural broadband is already a political issue. To this point, the political pressure has been contained. If most rural areas don't get served pretty quickly, however, the cable and phone companies are going to be looking at universal service requirements. That's more heavy-handed than the feds have been willing to be to this point, but it's the next step if the companies don't get off the dime and get it done.
15 megs is a little under 2 megabytes per second. That's a trivial I/O load for any modern computer. I have 15mb/sec FiOS, and I routinely download podcasts and such at 1.9 megabytes per second. And the computer shows no strain whatsoever — Process Explorer barely registers a load.
However, I've also observed that not all servers can keep up, and also that some seem to throttle a download to 200K or so (I know they're throttling because, if I start multiple downloads from the same server, they all run in parallel at 200K each).
Now, if I had that 100mb/sec Japanese connection, I'd probably have to use BitTorrent to max it out.